Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth [98]
Yellow Henry’s broad face, liberally moistened now and resinous-looking, sagged into lines of disbelief. He pressed a large palm the colour of dark butter against his nose in an apparent attempt to flatten it further. ‘Dat prime slave an’ fust clas’ charakker,’ he said, when he had to some extent recovered from his surprise. ‘He Mandingo people. Price all long dis coast sixty-two bar for prime man slave.’
‘Come now,’ Thurso said. ‘We both sabee dat too high. I can’t go above fifty-seven.’
‘How you make up one bar? What you go give me make up one bar?’
‘I make you two pound gunpowder, one bar. I make you one pound fringe, one bar. I make you one ounce silver, one bar.’
‘An’ you make dashee, put to dat?’
‘I make dashee six pewter tankards with each slave.’
‘No take tankids,’ Yellow Henry said sullenly. ‘You tankids trash, they no got handuls.’ His temper seemed to be deteriorating. ‘I take dashee two bras’ ketuls,’ he said. Suddenly he started forward, his eyes rolled fearfully and his hand went to the hilt of his cutlass. ‘Keep dat man back,’ he said.
‘What the devil is it?’ Thurso turned sharp round. ‘Where are your wits, Haines?’ he said. ‘Keep our people back.’
Calley, either curious to see more closely what was taking place or in eagerness to get within touching distance of the women, had blundered too near.
‘Stand clear, you clod-poll,’ Haines snarled. Annoyed at being found wanting, he struck back-handed at Calley, catching him across the cheek. ‘Do you want to start them shooting?’ he said.
Paris, leaning back against the gunwale, taking deep breaths of air, observed the bemused and rather frightened expression on Calley’s face as if from a great distance. He felt remote from the proceedings now, like an accidental bystander, and strangely open to the space of the world beyond the ship, swept, blown through with it. At the same time he was intensely aware of his physical being, aware of thirst, of his lungs breathing, of his hands, in which he still seemed to feel the warmth and shape of the women’s knees. In his hands too, not yet acknowledged in his heart, the throb of lust and jubilation he had felt at her abandonment …
He ceased after a while to follow the bargaining, which was extremely complicated. To establish the value of the slave in bars, which he had thought at first to be the whole purpose of the proceedings, was in fact only the beginning. This bar, it seemed, was merely a value given to a certain quantity of goods. It could be half a gallon of brandy or a bag of shot or two dozen flints or a length of printed cotton. It was in order to obtain small concessions and adjustments in these values that Thurso and Yellow Henry, facing each other in their respective hats, wheedled and blustered and simulated mirth or astonishment or disgust.
The tall negro whom Paris had examined first was purchased finally for six brass kettles, two cabers of cowries, four silver-laced cocked hats, twenty-five looking-glasses and an anker of brandy, with a bonus of six folding knives and a plumed hat offered by Thurso for the goodwill of the king’s trade. As soon as the deal was struck and the goods brought up, the man was dragged forward into the waist of the ship, where the branding irons had been heating all this while in the brazier.
Some fixity of the will kept Paris gazing after them. The slave was concealed from view by the men holding him down. But Paris saw the equable second mate, Simmonds, take out the bar, saw him hold it up and spit on the red-hot device at the tip, caught for a moment, against the white hull of the yawl beyond, the glowing, angular design of the brandmark – it was the letter K. Simmonds’s face wore a look of concentration, a recognition of the need for accuracy, which suddenly recalled to Paris his student days, assisting at dissections. Almost, for a moment, even now, it seemed that he might find some retreat in the memory of those days, the intent circle of students clustered round the table in the lamplight, the precise